With Covid-19 pandemic weakening the health systems and disrupts routine health-care services across the world, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that an additional 6,000 children might die daily from preventable causes in the next six months.
The UNICEF has now requested US $1.6 billion to support its humanitarian response for children impacted by the pandemic. The health crisis is “quickly becoming a child rights crisis. And without urgent action, a further 6,000 under-fives could die each day,” it said.
In India, the UNICEF said its plan to reach the most vulnerable women and children currently has a funding gap of US $19.3million.
With a dramatic increase in the costs of supplies, shipment and care, the agency appeal is up from a USD 651.6 million request made in late March - reflecting the devastating socioeconomic consequences of the disease and families’ rising needs.
“Schools are closed, parents are out of work and families are under strain,” UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said, adding, “As we reimagine what a post-Covid world would look like, these funds will help us respond to the crisis, recover from its aftermath, and protect children from its knock-on effects.”
The estimate of the 6,000 additional deaths from preventable causes over the next six months is based on an analysis by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published on Wednesday in the Lancet Global Health Journal.
UNICEF said it was based on the worst of three scenarios analysing 118 low and middle-income countries, estimating that an additional 1.2 million deaths could occur in just the next six months, due to reductions in routine health coverage, and an increase in so-called child wasting.
Around 56,700 more maternal deaths could also occur in just six months, in addition to the 144,000 likely deaths across the same group of countries. The worst case scenario, of children dying before their fifth birthdays, would represent an increase “for the first time in decades,” Fore said.
“We must not let mothers and children become collateral damage in the fight against the virus. And we must not let decades of progress on reducing preventable child and maternal deaths, be lost,” she said.
Access to essential services, like routine immunisation, has already been compromised for hundreds of millions of children and threatens a significant increase in child mortality.
According to a UNICEF analysis, some 77 per cent of children under the age of 18 worldwide are living in one of 132 countries with Covid-19 movement restrictions.
The UN agency also spotlighted that the mental health and psychosocial impact of restricted movement, school closures and subsequent isolation are likely to intensify already high levels of stress, especially for vulnerable youth.
The UNICEF pointed out that in many cases, refugee, migrant and internally displaced children are experiencing reduced access to protection and services while being increasingly exposed to xenophobia and discrimination.
Within its response, UNICEF has reached more than 1.67 billion people with COVID-19 prevention messaging around hand washing and cough and sneeze hygiene; over 12 million with critical water, sanitation and hygiene supplies; and nearly 80 million children with distance or home-based learning.